NOSCE TE IPSUM
by LadyKayoss
Summary: [Movieverse] My 50th story! With his memory gone and his actuators removed, Otto has a chance for a new life. And then his only friend goes through a horrible transformation...
1. The Waters of Lethe

Disclaimer: All characters are property of Marvel. I don't own 'em, and I'm not making any money off their use.

Author's Note: I almost didn't do this fic, but I posted a fragment of this chapter on dA and was encouraged to continue, so here we go. I hope that you all find it an interesting read. And I've done more research for this fic than I have for some of my term papers, so y'all'd better appreciate the effort! Anyway… Here is my next big epic fic, now that _Moonlight Becomes You _is over with. This story is going to start off a bit slow, but I promise that it will pick up once I introduce the Lizard.

_**NOSCE TE IPSUM**_

_One – The Waters of Lethe_

The sun felt good on his chilled skin, warming his stiff muscles and slowly drying the heavy wet clothing that shrouded his body. He wanted to roll on to his back, exposing his face to the welcome warmth, but something was wedged against his back, something hard and unyielding that wouldn't let him move. He didn't have the strength yet to push it away, so he stayed as he was.

Feeling began to return to his limbs, and with it, awareness of his body in relation to his surroundings. He was lying on a soft, gritty surface – _dirt? Sand? – _littered with pieces of debris that dug into his skin, though he wasn't uncomfortable. The thick, water-logged garment he wore protected him from the worst of it. Somewhere, there was the sound of water lapping at an invisible shore.

The tingling in his waking muscles sharpened into pain. But it was a good pain, he supposed. It let him know that he was alive. Though why that should be a concern was beyond him. After all, why shouldn't he be alive? Was there a reason? He didn't know. Something about that lack of information bothered him, but he brushed it aside. For now, he wanted to lie quietly and enjoy the sunlight, and the soothing sound of waves. The tranquil atmosphere nearly lulled him back into slumber, but he kept a grip on consciousness. He needed to figure out where he was, and why he was there, and… and something else he was sure he should know, but his groggy mind couldn't figure out what that was, yet.

He twitched his fingers, the first movement he'd managed since he'd awoken. He shifted his hand from his face, and suddenly yelped as the sun forced its way through his eyelids. He hadn't expected the light to _hurt _him! He shaded them with his hand, and finally opened his eyes.

He lay amidst the twisted debris of a shattered structure; warped and rusted girders thrust out of the - river? Was it a river? - or lay where they'd washed up on the banks, rotted, soggy planks of wood littered the ground beside him or floated lazily amidst the wreckage in the water. He slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, causing a peculiar pull at his spine. He ignored it, disregarding what was probably just another twinge as his body slowly came back to life. Now he could see more of his surroundings; it was indeed a riverbank where he'd awakened. He smiled slightly, glad he hadn't regained consciousness _in _the river!

Squinting his eyes, he turned his head to see what was behind him. The gleaming spires of a massive, distant city dominated the horizon, and he studied the jagged cityscape, wondering which city it was. As if that was a signal, other questions began to flood his mind. Why was he on the riverbank? What was the wreckage from? Why did he hurt?

And then came the question that should have been the simplest to answer, but that answer eluded him. Who was he?

His euphoria began to fade, and panic set in.

His mind was an empty void. He knew names like 'hand,' 'foot,' 'leg', etcetera, but not the sum of those parts. There was a word for this emptiness, this loss. _Amnesia. _

Panic gave him the strength he needed to surge to his feet, but before he could take a step, there was a sharp tug on his back that caused him to stagger backwards and stumble over something underfoot. He yelped and went down to his knees, landing heavily on top of whatever had tripped him and bruising his shins in the process. He looked down, and stared, puzzled, at the segmented length of metal that had caused so much trouble. It was long and thick, composed of inch-thick segments wider at the bottom than the top, tapering to a pointed head at one end. It had an almost skeletal look to it, but his shattered mind insisted it was a _machine. _He shifted so he was no longer atop it and pulled it into his lap to examine it more closely.

It no longer functioned, that part inside him that identified the machine had insisted. It lay limply, unmoving. Grit and debris were lodged in every joint, every crevice of the machine, and there were stains on the metal where scummy river water had dried. In one place, the conduits running the length of the device had been torn, exposing delicate circuitry ruined by whatever ordeal it had been through. His fear had somewhat abated as curiosity took over, but as he ran his hand along the machine's length, trying to find its source, he began to feel uneasy. The segmented body curved around behind him and _went inside his coat! _And when he twisted his head to better see behind him, he could make out three other long, unmoving shapes spread out behind him. He unzipped his coat, trembling fingers following the metal waistband beneath around to the small of his back, feeling the metal lying against his skin, and then finding the origin of one of the machines.

They were _attached _to him. He hadn't thought the situation could get much worse, but he was fairly certain that normal humans didn't go around with machines coming out of their spines. He gave the base of one of the machines a yank, but it was attached too tightly for his weak muscles to tear loose.

He gave up for the moment, and pushed the metal body off his knees. He struggled to stand, but their weight on his spine dragged him down, and he crawled on his hands and knees to the river's edge, the four serpentine machines trailing after him, dragging his spine until it felt as if the weight of the machines would rip it out of his back. He desperately needed clues as to who he was, and why he'd come to be here, and why he had these… things on his back. Perhaps, if he could just see himself… The wavelets distorted his reflection, too much for him to make out more than vague shapes, so he scanned the shoreline until he spotted a still puddle of water off to his left, and he crawled along the bank towards it.

The sunlit surface was reflective enough that he could see enough of himself to get a feel for what he looked like. The face that gazed back at him could have been that of a complete stranger. Dark eyes stared up at him, set deeply above a large, crooked nose. His fingers traced the unfamiliar lines of his cheek, ending at the wide mouth. He judged his age to be somewhere in the mid to late forties, and from the condition of his body, he didn't spend much time in the gym.

All in all, there was nothing useful to be gleaned from his reflection. He sat back on his heels and started rummaging through his coat's many pockets. His exploration turned up very little – a wad of soggy cash, something that had been a newspaper clipping until the ink had run, a broken pair of silver-rimmed sunglasses, a few small metal pieces that looked as if they'd come off some sort of machine, two cigars that had survived the dunking because they were wrapped in plastic, and a lighter. No ID, no address book, no credit cards, no nametag that helpfully declared, "Hello, My Name Is…"

He ran his hand through his hair, which had dried into spikes. He had no idea what to do now. A part of him wanted to lapse into hysterics, another part wanted to curl up into a fetal position until this all went away. Logic won over, as he sensed was normally the case. It was a relief to realize he wasn't prone to fits, that he could think rationally even in a situation like this… whatever this situation was. He closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath as he considered his options. He needed to find help – evidence suggested he'd been in an accident of some sort, and it was possible he was hurt in ways he didn't yet feel. Perhaps the… the _things _coming out of his back were a result. How to find that help, though? The city seemed so far away, and his legs felt too shaky to hold his weight. Crawling may have been humiliating and painful, but it seemed his best option.

And then the nausea hit him, and he flopped to the ground as it seemed to spin out of control. He groaned, but the shifting earth beneath him showed no mercy. The nausea was slow to pass, he lost the contents of his stomach before he finally recovered enough to push himself back on to his hands and knees. His arms trembled to take his weight, and he realized grimly that crawling was out. The dizzy spell may have passed, but he was aware of there being something not right with his body. The illness was still there, hiding itself, waiting to flare up again when he least expected it.

He shifted so that his face was back over the puddle, and he washed the taste of vomit from his mouth. His throat was dry, and he took a few small swallows. A part of him warned him against drinking water that was likely highly contaminated, but he'd probably already swallowed several gallons of the river water before he'd finally ended up on shore. A few more sips wouldn't hurt him. The scummy water tasted only slightly better than the vomit's aftertaste.

The disturbed water settled, its surface again becoming an imperfect mirror, and he stiffened. There was a large shape dominating the reflection, blurry at first, but finally becoming recognizable as the shape of another person standing at his shoulder, reduced to a vague silhouette by the person's distance from the puddle. "Hel…" he tried, he tried, his voice coming out as a croak. "Help me…" he whispered. The person didn't move, and he turned slowly to better make his appeal. "Help…" he tried again, but trailed off. There was no one there, nor was there anything that could have caused the reflection. "Hello?" he called desperately. "Where… where are you? Can you help me?" His plaintive cries went unheeded. All the strength seemed to go out of him, and he sat heavily, staring dully down at the now-empty puddle.

Another spell of nausea took him, and he gritted his teeth and rode it out as best as he could. When it was over, he lay shivering, despite the heat. He had to get to a hospital; the sense that there was something wrong besides his amnesia intensified. But he'd never make it to the city's limits, much less to a hospital…

An idea occurred to him. _Head upriver… _ The wreckage scattered around him had no obvious source on the land or in the water around him; therefore, it had washed away from somewhere upriver, presumably taking him with it. Perhaps there were people upriver who were searching for him! Taking another sip of water, he began the painstaking crawl through the debris littering the shore, dodging rotted slats of wood, shards of glass still imbedded in rusted window frames, twists of metal supports, determinedly hauling himself around every obstacle. The pain in his back was excruciating, and every ten minutes or so, the nausea would return. Hidden slivers of wood or shards of glass sliced at his leather gloves until his hands bled.

It took some forty minutes before he finally stumbled upon human activity. He'd been hearing it for twenty minutes: the drone of machinery, the murmur of voices, the occasional scream of sirens. But he was moving so slowly it seemingly took him an eternity before everything finally came into view.

Police cars formed a barrier around a shattered wharf leading out to what looked like the remains of a building's foundation. Mixed in with the black-and-white vehicles were several anonymous cars and an ominous van, its rear doors open and exposing a jumble of equipment. The two people closest to the van wore plastic all-concealing suits. His shattered mind dredged up the name for those outfits: _radiation suits. _He ceased his slow advance, no longer certain it would be safe. After a moment, though, he decided to proceed. Had it been dangerous, the people in the radiation suits wouldn't have their hoods thrown back, and the police wouldn't be walking around the scene dressed only in uniforms. A horn blasted, and he turned his head towards the river. A large boat with police scattered around the deck was slowly crossing the river, hauling a net behind it. _Dredging it, _he thought. _They're looking for something. Me?_

He didn't give any more thought to police presence and what it might mean. All he saw was someone who could help him. Slowly, he hauled himself to his feet, not wanting to crawl on his belly before these people. The metal things behind him threatened to over balance him again and send him toppling, so he compensated by leaning forward. He took one unsteady step, then another. The nausea rose within him again, but he fought it down. Help was so close… Hands outspread, he headed towards the first police officer he saw, failing to notice the man's astonishment until he drew his gun. The policeman screamed something that made no sense over the pounding of the blood in his ears. The edge of his vision started to go black, and he realized that he'd overexerted himself. Panicked, he cried, "Help me!" Then his knees gave out, and he fell forward. Darkness took him before he hit the ground.

XXX

The research paper had been sitting on Curt Connors' home desk for over a month, beneath a steadily accumulating pile of homework and exams and neatly paper-clipped copies of his own research. He'd leafed through it once, then hadn't had the heart to pick it up and give it the thorough grading that it deserved. Not after the accident. But the offending paper had been at the back of his mind ever since.

The thirteen-page paper had been written by Peter Parker, who was perhaps his most brilliant student – when the boy bothered to live up to his potential – turned in late, but its length exceeded his requirements. The boy had put a lot of effort into the initial research, and he could still remember when Peter had dropped it by his office on the way into the city to see some play. The youth's eyes had been glowing as he'd described his meeting with the paper's main focus, Dr. Otto Octavius. The meeting had so inspired the youth that he'd completed the paper two hours later, and he'd immediately called up Curt, asking if he could stop by the professor's home that very night to turn it in. Peter's enthusiasm had been infectious, and Curt had even chosen not to deduct points for lateness.

And then he'd returned from class the following day to find Martha waiting for him, her face streaked with tears. She hadn't been able to speak, merely pointing at the TV which was still running the breaking news story: A small, privately-owned lab financed by OsCorp Industries had been the site of a horrible accident, leaving one person dead and another in critical condition. By the end of the night, he'd lost two of his best friends, one to death, and the other to madness.

The paper had remained unread ever since. There was an unspoken agreement between Curt and Peter; the youth didn't ask about his paper, knowing that it was a sore subject, and Curt re-calculated his grade, omitting the need for the points the paper would have given him. After all, it wouldn't have been fair to ask Peter to research and write a new paper when it wasn't his fault Curt found it too painful to read the one he'd been given.

But now Curt found himself at his polished wooden desk, leaning back in his chair, the paper on his lap. He was holding a drink in his hand, absently swirling the contents as he stared off into space. _Otto is dead. _It had been all over the news ever since the previous evening; Spider-Man had put an end to his 'devious plot to destroy the city,' and the machine he'd constructed had been drowned in the river – along with Otto. It was thought that he'd rebuilt the machine that had caused him so much trouble in the first place, but larger. Given what had happened the first time, Curt knew the machine could have done some serious damage to the city. _I should be relieved, _he thought. For the past month, he'd been inundated by news of 'Doctor Octopus's' misdeeds, and Curt had felt shame on behalf of his friend. Something had driven him over the edge into madness, and he'd no longer been in control of his actions. Had Otto realized what he was doing, he would have been horrified by what he'd done. _He won't be forced into doing anything else against his will again._ Curt took a sip, not even tasting the brandy.

Martha had taken Billy to her mother's, sensing that Curt would need the time alone. Their small home was eerily silent without Billy watching TV or playing video games, or Martha puttering around the kitchen or cleaning when she wasn't busy catching up on work. After years of living with a noisy family, the silence was deafening. He appreciated Martha's gesture, however; he needed to be alone.

Otto and Rosie were two of his oldest friends. He'd known them long before he'd known his own wife; hell, he'd been instrumental in finally getting the shy Otto and the busy Rosie together. Of course, he hadn't expected that Otto would actually _act_ on his suggestion to take that poetry class to get close to her, but it had been his advice, and it had worked. And it had been worth it to see Otto pace around their small dorm room reading poetry aloud and struggling not to rationalize the lines that made no sense to him. It had been even more fun drunk, Curt thought with a wry grin. Otto's dislike of T. S. Elliot wasn't because he didn't like the man's work; rather, it stemmed from an incident involving a full beer keg, a loss of clothing due to an ill-advised streaking through one of the athletic sororities' parties, and an attempt to impress Rosie – who was, of course, at said party - by slurring together the verses from two different Elliot poems. She'd never let him live it down. Curt never brought it up – but then, he'd been just as drunk and just as undressed…

_Those were the days, _Curt thought wistfully. They'd been roommates, he and Otto, and had hit it off almost immediately when they'd realized they were kindred spirits. They'd been inseparable ever since, even though their majors took them in different directions. Curt had wanted to be a doctor, while Otto was interested in physics. They'd had some overlapping classes, and when they had the same assignments, they'd often worked together with the result of both of them getting top marks in their classes.

Even after they'd both settled down, they'd seen a lot of each other. Martha had loved Rosie and Otto, so they'd often gone out together, or would just have pleasant evenings of dinner at one of their homes. They'd often lose the women when they'd enthusiastically launch into scientific discussions. Their last dinner together had been three nights before the demonstration, and Otto had been so excited telling Curt about the fusion reaction that he hadn't touched his food. He'd dragged Curt into his lab, showing off the shielding devices under construction, and ending with the revelation of the completed actuators. His eyes had been shining, like a child's on Christmas morning, and Curt had been sorry he'd had to tell his friend that he wouldn't be able to make it to the demonstration. But he'd been so certain that his brilliant friend would get everything he'd been hoping for…

Curt held up his glass as if for a toast. _To Otto, _he thought. _May you finally find peace with Rosie. _He tossed down the drink, then nearly choked when the sudden ringing of the phone shattered the silence. He set down the cup and got to his feet, the paper in its blue plastic cover falling to the floor, and was halfway to the phone before wondering if he should answer it. Did he really want his brooding interrupted by offers for a better long distance service? But the phone continued to ring insistently, and he finally picked up the receiver. "Hello?" He was ready to hang up at the first sign of solicitation.

"Dr. Curtis Connors, please," the voice on the other end of the phone said emotionlessly.

"Speaking," Curt said.

"Dr. Connors, your presence is required at Midtown Hospital," the woman continued. She was still speaking when Curt interrupted.

"The hospital? Oh my God… is it Martha and Billy? Are they all right?" It was suddenly hard to breath. If his wife and son were hurt…

"This is about Otto Octavius," the woman's voice plowed through his panic. "He's currently in no condition to make any medical decisions. He has no family that we can find, and his medical records have you down as his medical proxy. The doctors attending him would like you to come down to the hospital to make a decision on his behalf."

It took a moment for what the woman was telling him to sink in. "Otto's alive?" he asked, feeling rather foolish.

"Yes," the woman said, sounding slightly exasperated. "That's why we need you to come down to Midtown Hospital. Ask for Dr. Fisher." The woman hung up on him, and Curt continued to stare at the receiver for several long moments before he finally replaced it on the cradle. _Otto is alive… _Curt grabbed up his jacket and keys. Otto needed his help, and he wasn't going to let him down.

XXX

It was business as usual at Midtown Hospital, and Curt wondered if they were keeping Otto's presence under wraps. He certainly hadn't heard anything about his survival on the radio, and Curt kept his voice down as he sidled up to the reception desk and asked for Dr. Fisher. He was directed down a side hall towards the ICU, and knew he'd was in the right place when he reached a door flanked by two heavily armed police officers. Through the door, he could see a covered shape on a gurney with four long, limp 'cables' suspended over him. The police blocked the door before he could enter, however, and he didn't like the matching look on their faces. "I'm here to see Dr. Fisher," he said, keeping his voice calm. "I'm Dr. Connors."

One of the officers slipped inside, and Curt waited about five minutes before the woman returned, leading a weary-looking middle-aged man carrying a clipboard. "Dr. Connors? I'm Dr. Fisher." There was an awkward moment when Fisher offered his right hand to shake, then realized Curt couldn't reciprocate and immediately shifted the clipboard so he could offer his left. "I'm in charge of Dr. Octo- Octavius." Curt caught the man's slip-up, but didn't call him out. The man who'd robbed banks and nearly killed everyone aboard the train had been Doctor Octopus, not his friend Octavius.

"How is he?" Curt asked, as Dr. Fisher gestured for him to take a seat on the narrow couch outside the door.

Fisher glanced through his charts before answering. "He's suffering from exposure to radiation; fortunately, the river water diffused it enough that it was a low level." Curt flinched; he'd told Otto not to use something as unstable as tritium. "He's experiencing nausea and weakness, but it's being treated and he should make a full recovery. He also has several first- and second-degree burns from the heat, but nothing severe; he'll have minimal scarring. There are also several bruises and abrasions, which are to be expected. We'll have to keep him here for observation for a week or so, but he should be all right."

Curt stole a glance towards the well-guarded door. "Can I see him?"

Dr. Fisher shook his head. "The police want as few people to come in to contact with him as possible right, to prevent any… incidents. Besides, he's been unconscious since they brought him in; he wouldn't even notice your presence. Later, maybe…" he said evasively.

"Why did you ask me to come?" Curt finally got to the point. "The woman who called made it seem urgent, but it looks to me you have everything under control."

"He has no surviving family, and you're his medical proxy. We need your permission to perform the surgery necessary to remove the tentacles and harness once his condition is stabilized." He held a medical form towards Curt, who skimmed through the paragraphs without really reading. "As long as they're attached to him, Dr. Octavius remains a threat to society. We've spoken to his court-appointed lawyer, Mr. Murdock, and he says that removing them will help his case and his eventual reform. Also," he said, flipping to another page of Otto's medical charts, "removing them would improve his chance of recovery. The tentacles don't seem to be functioning, and their full weight is putting quite a strain on his spine. His back is being pulled out of alignment, and one of the fused needles in his spine is pulling loose, and if it does, it there's the possibility that it could tear a nerve."

Curt had seen the melted nano-wire contacts sunk into Otto's spine when his friend had first been brought to the hospital, and he shuddered in memory of the hideous wounds. If one of them tore loose, it could cause even greater damage. "If it's so bad, why do you need my permission to remove them?" he asked.

"To protect the hospital against a law suit," Fisher said blandly. "If we performed such major surgery without permission, Dr. Octavius could conceivably sue us and win. As his proxy, if you sign that form, we won't be held accountable."

Curt fished a pen out of his pocket and balanced the clipboard on his knees, but he didn't sign. "You're talking about a surgery unlike anything that's been tried before; how do you know it'll be better for him than leaving the actuators in place?"

Dr. Fisher rubbed his eyes. "We don't," he admitted. "We're flying in one of the country's best neurosurgeons and a couple other specialists to look him over, but we won't know how Dr. Octavius will be affected until after the surgery. He could be perfectly fine, or he could be crippled for life… or even die." Dr. Fisher regarded Curt solemnly. "I know it's a difficult choice to make, but you have to do what's best for Dr. Octavius."

Was crippling – or death - preferable to living with the actuators attached? Perhaps they didn't work now, but they could be repaired. Now that Otto had spent a month living with them, would he want to let them go? Had they insinuated themselves into his mind so much that he'd be convinced he could no longer live without them? Curt remembered his arguments with Otto against using AI in the actuators, not when he was planning to hook them directly into his brain. Otto had laughed and assured him he was taking every precaution. Now, though, who knew what damage they had wreaked on him? What would taking them away do to him?

Maybe it would destroy him – or maybe it would give him the chance to resume a normal life. It would be a life without his beloved Rosie, but at least it would be his life again. _Don't I owe it to him to give him the chance for normality?_

Pen in hand, Curt leaned over and signed the paper.

To Be Continued…

And just in case someone comments on this, it _is _possible to drive a vehicle with just your left hand, though it's difficult. I got a demonstration of this when my Dad broke his right wrist and couldn't use it at all, and yet, he refused to have someone drive for him. (Believe me, it's not fun to have him as a backseat driver!) So I figure that Curt can drive, he just doesn't unless he has to.


	2. Tabula Rasa

Disclaimer: All Spider-Man characters are property of Marvel. I wish I owned them, but I don't.

Author's Note: I forgot to mention last chapter, thanks to lotus-kid and vorkosigan for supplying the info I needed on medical proxies. And sorry for my disappearance; I was visiting home for about a week and a half, and home visits tend to drain me of creativity. I just can't seem to write in that atmosphere, for some reason. But now I'm back, and I'm going to try to do as much as I can before classes begin on the 29th. And for all of you who spotted the Murdock reference, yes, it is indeed _that _Murdock, as you'll soon see, though his costumed alter-ego won't be making an appearance, as far as I know. I thought he'd be appropriate not just because it's a sneaky reference, but because Murdock was actually Otto's first lawyer in the comic, back when Otto first had his accident and no one was sure if he was genuinely a bad guy, or just someone a little confused by his traumatic accident. Another slow chapter, and this one is kind of short, but things will pick up! I promise!

_**NOSCE TE IPSUM**_

_Two – Tabula Rasa_

The surgery room below bore more resemblance to a medieval torture chamber than a hospital room, Curt thought, his uneasiness intensifying as he took a seat in the viewing chamber. The walls were a drab gray, half in shadow because the lights had been positioned to fall directly over the spine of the shrouded figure laid out on the table. Thick leather straps securely bound Otto's prone form to the table, and the motionless actuators had been stretched to full extension and bolted to the floor just behind the pincer heads and at various points along their lengths. To Curt, it looked like an ancient rack, stretching Otto's limbs to the breaking point. Adding to the illusion was the table of operating tools, many of which didn't belong in a hospital room. Saws, drills, and other power tools Curt didn't recognize shared the table with the surgical implements.

Standing just far enough not to interfere with the surgeons but close enough to move in should trouble arise were half a dozen heavily armed police officers in Kevlar armor, fingers on the triggers, ready to fire at the slightest twitch of one of the deadly machines. There were more armed men in the viewing room with Curt; the operating theater had been chosen as the location for the removal of Otto's actuators for this purpose: to position gunmen out of range of the deadly actuators but keep Otto within range of their rifles. These were the people who'd be able to put a bullet in Otto's skull if necessary…

It all made Curt's skin crawl, and for what must have been the thousandth time since he'd signed the release form three days ago, Curt wondered again if he'd done the right thing. Legally, he had every right to make such decisions for his unconscious friend, and he'd already been told by every doctor and police officer that he'd spoken to that he'd done the right thing, that this could only help his friend's situation. But it still made him nauseous to think that Otto was undergoing extensive neural surgery because of Curt's decision. And now there was no going back; the surgery was scheduled to begin in about ten minutes. Curt shifted in the narrow, straight-backed seat – probably designed for discomfort to keep any watching medical students awake – and found himself wishing he were elsewhere. He'd cancelled class for the day to be there for his friend, but now Curt found himself dreading it. What if Otto awoke while he was here, and found out what Curt had done? What if he hated Curt for it?

_What's done is done, _Curt thought resignedly. If Otto was going to hold this against Curt, then so be it. Maybe he'd hate Curt for the rest of his life, but it would be a _better_ life than if he still had the actuators attached. Right?

The viewing room's door opened again, and they were joined by a tall young man in a slightly shabby but still well-tailored suit and sunglasses. He held a briefcase in one hand, and a white cane in the other. Curt watched him out of the corner of his eye, idly wondering what the blind man was doing in the viewing room. He heard a murmured exchange between the man and one of the police officers, then the blind man began to head towards Curt. "Dr. Connors?" he called, head slightly cocked as he awaited an answer.

"I'm Dr. Connors," Curt offered, and the man oriented himself on the voice and headed confidently towards Curt with only the slightest use of the white cane. He came to a halt before the scientist and offered his hand, after shifting his white cane to the hand with the briefcase.

"I'm Matt Murdock, Dr. Octavius's lawyer," he introduced himself. "I've been trying to contact you, but I always seem to be just missing you." There was something faintly accusatory in his tone, as if he suspected Curt of avoiding him. Which he had been, truthfully. Curt didn't want to make any more life-or-death decisions for his friend, decisions that could land Otto someplace worse than the operating room. He was rather surprised to realize that Otto's lawyer was blindhad they been so desperate for someone to take Otto's case that they'd have taken anyone? Then Curt mentally slapped himself. He of all people should know by now that handicaps didn't stop someone from being good at their job. Maybe Murdock couldn't see, but didn't most of a lawyer's work deal with talking? Testimonies, statements, confessions… you didn't need sight to process those, just a keen mind. And Curt bet that for the times when eyesight was required, such as the examination of evidence, Murdock had an assistant with a fine eye for detail who could tell him all he needed to know.

Murdock's smile didn't waver, but Curt realized he was probably wondering why Curt hadn't taken his hand. "Er, left hand," he mumbled, still embarrassed by his earlier thoughts. "I'm an amputee."

Murdock set his briefcase on the floor, leaned the cane against the chair, then offered his left hand. "Sorry about that," he said, taking Curt's hand in a firm grip. He then took the seat next to Curt and asked curiously, "What's it look like in there?" He nodded towards the glass window overlooking the surgery room.

"Like they're torturing him," Curt said before he could stop himself, then grimaced.

The lawyer heard the pain in Curt's voice, and said with surprising sympathy, "It's hard to watch friends being hurt – especially when we're the ones responsible for that pain. But you made the right choice, Dr. Connors. This is the only chance he'll have at ever regaining a normal life. It may ease his sentencing, and since it takes quite awhile to recover from major surgery like this, he may spend much of his prison time in a hospital rather than a penitentiary." Curt shuddered at the thought of Otto locked away with the scum of society, where that fine mind of his would go to waste. "I'll do whatever I can to keep that prison time to a minimum," Murdock said.

_No promises to keep him out of prison completely,_ Curt noticed sadly. _This is probably the best that can be hoped for._ "What's going to happen to him?" Curt asked.

Murdock mulled this over for a moment. "They want to put him on trial for the murder of those seven doctors, bank robbery, reckless endangerment of lives, and destruction of public property. He could end up with life in prison if he's found guilty of all charges – multiple back-to-back life sentences, with no chance at parole." Curt's mouth was suddenly very dry; it didn't sound like Otto had a snowflake's chance in hell. "However, we've seized Dr. Octavius's files from OsCorp, and I intend to prove that he wasn't responsible for his actions, that the AI of the tentacles took over his mind and made him do it. At the very worst, he'll still be considered an accessory to these crimes, and get shorter jail time. At best, I may be able to get an insanity plea. He'd be better off in a mental hospital than a prison. They aren't good options, I know," he said, perhaps sensing Curt's despair, "but it could be much, much worse."

Curt couldn't think of a response. Below, several doctors filed into the room, and Curt focused his attention on them as they took their positions. One of them flicked on a monitor that showed a 3D representation of Otto's ruined spine. Dr. Fischer had shown Curt pictures they'd taken of Otto's spine now, and the pictures from the initial attempt to remove the actuators for comparison. The damage had increased, meaning they had to formulate a new way to remove the actuators with the least damage.

It hadn't done Curt any good to see that there was a drop of dried blood on one of the older pictures that had been retrieved from the destroyed surgery room…

They'd opted not to completely remove the spinal brace. The melted nanowires had fused with his spinal cord as well as to the vertebrae, and removal could cause severe neural damage. As long as they weren't hooked up to the immense weight of the actuators, they weren't doing Otto any harm, beyond making his spine more rigid than normal. Only one of the nanowires, the one pulling Otto's vertebrae out of alignment, was going to be removed. The arms, harness, wires, and the outer part of the shell of each vertebral segment of the spinal brace would be removed. The part of the shell lying flush to his skin, however, had melted into his flesh. In places, skin had even healed _over _the metal. Complete removal of the metal brace would be more painful than leaving pieces intact. So the nanowires and a thin line of metal plates running from nape of neck to small of back would be all that was left of the harness – he'd never completely regain his flexibility, but they thought he had a good chance of being able to walk again. He'd also have extensive scarring around his waist and along his spine, but he'd be alive, and… normal.

Beside Curt, Murdock had opened his briefcase and pulled out several papers with the raised bumps of the Braille alphabet. He was running his fingers over the lines, but his face was turned towards the doctors below. Curt couldn't shake the feeling that, despite the man's handicap, he was somehow watching what was going on below.

The police officers in the viewing room with Curt lined the window, guns at the ready. One hovered near him and Murdock, ready to yank them out of the way should chaos erupt below. Curt didn't think the man's presence was necessary; the actuators hadn't so much as twitched since Otto had been brought in. If having heavy metal bolts driven through their segments hadn't brought them to life, Curt didn't think there was any danger now. The machines seemed to be completely dead. And from the uneasy glances of the doctors, _they _weren't too happy about the police presence, either, even if their purpose was to protect them from the actuators.

One of the doctors removed a saw from the table, his eyes never leaving the actuators as he started it up. The machines didn't react to the sound. Encouraged, the doctor walked over to the closest of the actuators, the lower left. Curt forced himself to watch as the blade bit into the metal. The blade whined in protest as it tore through the conduits running through the actuator's heart, spraying a dark, oily fluid over the doctor and Otto. Metal screamed in agony, voicing what the immobile machine and scientist could not, as the final connector between actuator and harness was severed, and the ruined end fell off the gurney to fall to the floor with an echoing _clunk_.

Curt couldn't watch anymore; it reminded him too much of his own amputation. Maybe the actuators weren't flesh and blood, but they were still part of Otto. He refused to break his promise to himself to stay with Otto, so instead, he squeezed his eyes shut.

But he couldn't block out the sound of another actuator dying, nor could he escape the knowledge that it was his fault…

XXX

The continuous thrum of voices, echoing and faint as though crossing a vast distance, finally drew him out of the darkness to which he'd retreated, into equal blackness when he tried forcing his eyes open. The voices grew louder as he became more aware, but they remained indistinct, their meaning escaping his attempts to understand. He opened his mouth to call out to them, but his dry mouth refused to form the words. He licked his lips and tried again, this time forcing out a barely audible, "He… llo…?"

Something appeared before him, slim, delicate and vaguely feminine. He couldn't distinguish any details, but something about her seemed… familiar. That alone made him desperate to make contact with her; she was the first thing he'd seen since waking on the riverbank that had triggered that feeling of familiarity. "Who…?" he tried. She angled her face so she was looking obliquely at him, and he thought he caught a flash of red in her dark eyes before she turned away. That one look had been enough for him to realize where he'd seen her before – she'd been the shape he'd seen reflected behind him in the puddle, before he'd sought help. "Who…" he asked again, but her shape became less defined, dissolving into a fine mist before vanishing completely, taking the voices with her.

He frowned in bafflement. Was he even awake? He'd _thought _he was; he could feel his body through a pleasant haze of numbness, and now that the voices had gone silent, he could hear the bustling sounds of life some ways away. If he had to venture a guess, he'd say he was in a hospital; it would fit with the hard bed beneath his stomach, the antiseptic smell in the air, and the constant hum of activity somewhere beyond him. But he couldn't _see_ anything, though he knew his eyes were open. Something was wrapped around his eyes, blocking out all light –_then how could I see that woman?_ – and he tried to drag his arm over to pull the bindings away, but the limb felt leaden and wouldn't respond to his commands. He groaned, and heard something shift off to his left at the sound. There were footsteps, receding from his hearing, and then after a moment, footsteps returning.

"Awake at last, I see," came a voice, its tone polite, if strained. The man, presumably a doctor, moved closer. "How are you feeling?"

"Thirsty," he said thickly. "Numb. Can't… see…"

"I'll have some fresh water brought to you," the doctor said briskly. "The numbness is from the painkillers; you were in pretty rough shape from your ordeal." He seemed to be almost purposely evasive, to the frustration of his amnesiac patient. "As for your eyes, your sensitivity to light seems to have worsened since you were last checked out. We've kept your eyes covered because we've needed light to examine you, and this was the best way to protect them. Now that you're awake, though, I can find a pair of sunglasses for you."

He remembered how his eyes had burned when he'd awoken on the river bank, and wondered why. But his mouth was too dry to form more than monosyllabic sentences, so the question would have to wait. There was something far more important he needed to know. "Who…?"

"I'm Dr. Fischer," the doctor said, misunderstanding his patient's question. "You're in Midtown Hospital." There was something peculiar about the man's tone when he said that last, a sharpness the amnesiac didn't understand. "You were brought here five days ago, when the police found you on the river bank. You've been undergoing treatment for radiation sickness, and you have some minor burns." There was a hesitation in the doctor's voice, as though there was something he was reluctant to say…

_Five days… _ He'd been here five days. More of his life that he'd lost… There was a commotion at the door, and he found his head being lifted from the donut-shaped head rest used for face-down patients. A smooth glass rim was held to his lips, and he greedily sucked down the cool water. _Much better, _he thought, as whoever held the glass pulled it away. _Radiation sickness… burns… but what about the machines on my back? That can't be normal. Why doesn't he say something about them? _He may have no memory, but he _knew _people didn't just walk around dragging metal snakes behind them.

The doctor had taken the interruption to speak with someone else who seemed to be standing outside the doorway, so his patient took the time to take stock of his body. It was still numb, but with a little concentration, he found he could at least shift his limbs. The effort was still enough to wear him out, and he let his face fall back on the cushion beneath. He had the feeling that strength would be slow to return, and that he'd have to take things one step at a time. As for those… those machines that had been attached to him, he had no way of knowing where they were. _Odd… I don't feel that weight on my back any more. Is it just the numbness?_

"Better now, Dr. Octavius?" Dr. Fischer said, presumably to some other medical personage who had joined him. The patient sighed, wondering when he was going to get the answers to his burning questions. Oddly, however, this Dr. Octavius seemed to be rather reticent; there was no answer to Dr. Fischer's inquiry.

"Dr. Octavius? Is everything all right?"

Still no response, and a suspicion began to form in the amnesiac's blank mind. The name held no familiarity for him, but… it was possible…

"Dr. Octavius?"

"Is that… me?" the patient wondered. "Am I Dr. Octavius?"

Dead silence met his remark. Then, "You don't remember your name?"

"No," he said hollowly. "I don't remember anything before…" He felt so pathetic. "Please… who am I? Why was I in the river? What are those… those things on my back?"

"Well, _this_ complicates things," he heard Dr. Fischer mutter to himself. "Yes, you're Dr. Octavius. Doctor Otto Gunther Octavius, to be exact," he said.

"Otto Octavius," he repeated, trying the name out. It still wasn't familiar to him, crushing his hopes that knowing his name would be the key to unlocking the rest of his missing memories. His head would have drooped, had his face not already been pressed against the cushion.

"As for the rest…" Dr. Fischer trailed off. "That's a _long _story, and I don't think it's for the best that I tell you right now. But I can say that you don't have to worry about those machines attached to your spine. Two days ago, you underwent surgery to permanently remove them from your body. You're free of them."

XXX

The message on Curt's cell phone was a request from Dr. Fischer to come to Midtown Hospital as soon as possible. He presumed that it meant Otto had awakened, but why had he sounded so urgent? Maybe it was something else, another surgery they'd decided Otto needed that he had to sign for… No, he _had_ to be all right; Otto was due a little good luck after all that had happened to him. Curt's last communication with Fischer had revealed that Otto was recovering, though it would be a slow process. The call had to be about Otto's awakening.

He dreaded the impending encounter with his friend, but it was better to get it over with as soon as possible, so he cancelled his last class for the day and took off. Still, he found himself driving more slowly than the rush hour traffic made necessary, and by the time he parked in the hospital's sub-level garage he'd managed to steel his nerve for the confrontation.

It wasn't Dr. Fischer who'd met him in the lobby, however, but the lawyer, Matt Murdock. The blind man's look was inscrutable as he greeted Curt, remembering to offer his left hand. "It seems we have a complication," Murdock said. Curt couldn't judge from the man's tone whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, but since when had complications ever been good?

"Is Otto all right?" Curt asked, feeling the first stirring of alarm. The doctors had thought the surgery had been successful, but it had been such a sensitive operation that something could have gone wrong and they just didn't know it yet… Then again, it was Murdock who had met him, so maybe the problem was legal rather than medical. Maybe the police wanted to take Otto now, rather than wait. If that were the case, then there was nothing Curt could do for him.

"Physically, he's fine; the doctors are confident he'll make an almost full recovery." Murdock hesitated. "However, he has another condition that has only just become clear now that Dr. Octavius is awake. He's suffering from severe memory loss."

"How severe?"

"Without questioning Dr. Octavius myself, I can't be certain, but Dr. Fischer believes it's a near total loss. Apparently, he can't remember anything except waking up on the river bank. He didn't even know his own name, before Fischer told him." Murdock looked grim. _Complications, indeed._

"He's what you would call a _tabula rasa_," came Dr. Fischer's voice from behind them. "A blank slate. It's not from the surgery; he says he was like this when he woke up, before the police found him. He…" Here, Fischer hesitated. "He didn't even know what the tentacles were. They frightened him."

_My God… _Curt tried to imagine what it must be like, waking into a situation where he was alone and in pain, and the whole world was against him – and not knowing _why_. Curt tried to quell the horror welling within him. "Can I see him?" Curt asked. It would be a futile gesture; if Otto couldn't remember his own name, there was no chance he'd know who Curt was. But after all this, a friendly face would probably be welcome, even if that face was an unfamiliar one.

"He was sleeping when I checked a few minutes ago," Dr. Fischer said, shaking his head. "Now that the surgery is over, the police should permit visitation. But… it wouldn't do any good; he wouldn't even know who you are. And… it could prove to be very painful for you. You were close, right? You'll be a total stranger to him. For some people, that's hard to take." His voice softened. "It's possible your presence could job a few memories, but don't expect miracles."

Curt swallowed; his mouth felt suddenly dry. _So many years together… gone… _"Is his memory loss permanent?" he asked hoarsely.

"It's difficult to tell," Dr. Fischer said, after a moment of thought. "I've heard of cases where an amnesiac's memories come back all at once, cases where they gradually come back over time… and, sometimes, the memories never return. We're not even sure about the cause of the memory loss, though considering the neural damage that resulted from the initial accident, it could have its roots in that."

Curt's knees felt weak, and he collapsed into the nearest seat. Murdock sat beside him and cleared his throat. "Which leaves us in a very difficult position," Murdock said. "He can't go to trial with his memory gone; he can't defend himself, and it wouldn't be very humane condemning a man who doesn't even know what he's done. There are those who want to jail him anyway, since we have incontrovertible evidence that he's Doctor Octopus, but that's not too likely, fortunately." He gave Curt a wry grin. "If that happened, there'd be public protest about the breakdown of the judicial system, villain or no."

"So what's going to happen to him?" Curt felt ill at the thought of jailing someone who was, in a way, a complete innocent.

Murdock absently ran his fingers along his briefcase's worn leather handle. "I'm pushing for house arrest," he said. "Dr. Octavius can't stay in the hospital forever, but he can't just go free, either. Confining him to a safe house while he recovers his memories seems to be the best option. Unfortunately, he has no family to take him in. Once we get approval, we'll have to select a place for him and find someone to take care of him – it wouldn't be safe for him to live alone. Because you have power of attorney, we're going to need you involved in this."

Curt had the dismaying feeling that he was going to see a lot of Murdock in the future. Why had he ever agreed to this? _Because you're Otto's closest friend… and because you never envisioned a scenario where there'd be no Rosie to handle this for him._

"We can't keep him here much longer; the police presence is driving the staff crazy, and no one is too happy about having the famous Doctor Octopus in the same building, even if he has been, to put it delicately, disarmed." Despite Dr. Fischer's nonchalance, it was evident that he was one of the doctors uncomfortable with Otto's presence. "As soon as we're certain he's stable, we need to get him out of here."

"It's going to take time; assuming we get approval, we have to find a safe-house for him, and in his condition he'll need constant supervision," Murdock sighed. "Not many people are going to want to take care of him, despite the fact that he's completely harmless."

_A safe-house… living without memory, without friends, with strangers who hate him for reasons he won't understand… I can't let them do that to Otto. _Curt knew he was going to catch hell for this later once Martha found out, but it didn't stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth. "I'll take him."

To Be Continued…


	3. Voices Without Faces

Disclaimer: All Spider-Man characters are property of Marvel. No profit is being made from their usage.

Author's Note: With this chapter, I finally began to bring in the Lizard elements of the story. I'm sure you were all impatient for them, right? I'm also debating the merits of starting _Shedding Skin; _I wanted to write it before starting the sequel to _Moonlight Becomes You, _but I'm wary of writing two Lizard fics at the same time. Three, if you count the other idea, _The Wrong Chemistry,_ that I have on the burner. Three Lizard fics at once may be too much of a good thing. For some reason, this is both the easiest and hardest of my current ongoing fics to write – easiest because I want to get the story moving, and hard because I want it to be just right. Oi, I may be a biology major, but trying to write about something scientific that, as far as I know, isn't possible, is, well, _impossible_. I was desperately trying to remember an experiment I did a couple years ago involving the transferal of a gene from one strain of bacteria to a completely different strain to genetically alter that strain… It's a lot easier with a single-celled organism than with something like, say, a human. So, I hope that my pseudoscience has some basis in reality.

_**NOSCE TE IPSUM**_

_Three – Voices Without Faces_

Otto (as he had begun to think of himself, since _any_ identity was better than _no_ identity, and he figured he'd have to get used to it, anyway) had been lying awake for about half an hour or so, listening to the bustle of activity outside his private room, desperately trying to pull clues from what he overheard about his life – Fischer had proven to be very evasive when it came to answering Otto's questions, and the only other people Otto had spoken to had been more interested in asking questions than answering them. The snatches of conversation he heard weren't encouraging, and they painted a rather bleak picture. What kind of patient was he that he needed twenty-four-hour police supervision and the occasional interrogation? He couldn't imagine himself as a _bad _person, but, really, how would he know? And it wasn't just his morals that were dubious; from what he'd overheard - they never said it to his face, of course - his sanity was questionable, as well.

Worse still were the voices, the soft murmurings that seemed to be located not outside his hospital room, but centered somewhere at the base of his skull, muffled and inaudible for the most part, as though there was a solid wall between them. He'd thought at first it was just some sort of background noise in his mind, until he realized that, if he concentrated hard enough, he could make out _words. _He hoped it was just a side effect of the medication and his own illness, and not a result of the madness that the people around him seemed to believe that he possessed…

Footsteps, coming through the door, making a beeline towards his head, dragged him out of his gloomy thoughts. "Are you awake?" Dr. Fischer's familiar voice asked.

"Yes," Otto said. His voice was stronger than before, he noted with some pleasure. At least he'd be able to form complete sentences this time around.

"You're going to have a visitor in a few minutes," Dr. Fischer said. _A visitor? _Otto winced internally; his last visitors had been a lawyer and a police officer, whose uncomfortably penetrating questions had made Otto feel like an ignorant child. That he'd been barely conscious and not fully able to articulate had made it even worse. He hadn't even fully understood most of the questions, and could barely even remember them now. They'd been intentionally evasive, trying to see what he remembered without giving anything about him or what he'd done away. Waiting for him to make a slip-up, and reveal that, perhaps, he wasn't quite as amnesiac as he claimed. His head may have been clearer now, but he didn't want to face that endless torrent of questions again…

Otto felt hands at the back of his head. "I'm going to uncover your eyes now; I've dimmed the lights as much as I can, but you might want to keep them closed at first." The bandage began to unwind, and Otto squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself for the searing pain he'd felt upon his first awakening. The bandages fell away, and Otto slowly, hesitantly, cracked one eye. He shut it again quickly, then slowly opened both eyes, giving them the chance to adjust. A blurry shape, slowly coming into focus, dominated his vision. So, this late middle-aged man was Dr. Fischer… It comforted him to put a face to the voice… especially when other faceless voices kept haunting him… "Your pupils are hyperdilated, so they don't adjust to changes in light and darkness." Dr. Fischer held up a pair of sunglasses. "Hopefully, these will help when we have to turn up the lights for your examinations."

Otto tried reaching with his left hand, but it resisted his commands. He glanced over, saw that besides the IV shunt he'd expected, there was also another tube he couldn't identify sticking in his arm – and a strap around his wrist, keeping it pinned to the table. He looked at Dr. Fischer for explanation.

"That's to keep you immobile while you were unconscious; if you had thrashed or turned, you could have injured your spine." Again, there was that impression that Fischer was holding something back. _You're doing this because you think I'm dangerous, _he thought, remembering one whispered exchange between an attending nurse and one of the unseen policemen outside his door. He wasn't restrained for his safety, but for theirs… The doctor unfastened the strap around his left wrist, then moved over to his right. "Don't make any movements that will jostle your spine," he warned. "Don't make any sudden movements. Don't try to sit up." He moved back, eying his patient as if assuring himself Otto was ready for human contact. He nodded to himself, then picked up the bandage he'd put aside. Clumps of dark brown hair stuck to the gauzy fabric, and Otto stared, his right hand automatically reaching towards his scalp to see what damage had been done. Fischer's eyes followed his movement. "You've had some hair loss from the radiation poisoning; nothing major, it's hardly noticeable," he quickly reassured Otto.

Minor hair loss was the least of his worries. But it did remind Otto of something that had been bothering him. "Can I have a mirror? Before I see my visitor?" he asked, a little shyly. He felt ashamed that he didn't even properly know what he _looked_ like.

Dr. Fischer nodded. "I'll have one brought in," he said, as if there was nothing unusual about the request. "I'll also send in more pillows to prop you up, so you don't have to have a conversation with your visitor's feet." Otto appreciated that; holding his head up for more than a few minutes wore him out, and it caused twinges of pain to race along the base of his neck and down along his shoulders. The doctor left him alone for a few moments, returning with a nurse holding the promised pillow and a mirror, its reflective surface turned away. After setting the mirror on the stand beside his bed, the nurse positioned the pillow under Otto's chest, careful not to jostle his injuries. Then she backed quickly away, as though nervous to be in his presence for too long.

"Ready?" Dr. Fischer asked, picking up the mirror. Otto nodded, his gaze riveted. He had a general idea of what he'd see, having glimpsed himself in the puddle back on the river. Still, what he saw shocked him. It wasn't that his features were displeasing, though he knew he'd never be considered handsome, it was the look etched in to his face. Sad brown eyes set deeply into a pain-lined face gazed back at him. Confused. Hurt. Lost. Hopeless. Those were the emotions displayed by the face in the mirror. He wrenched his gaze away from those bleak eyes, forcing himself to take in the details, the faded-sunburn hue of his skin, the wavy dark brown hair that hung almost into his eyes, the gauze patch on his cheek covering a wound Otto didn't even feel, the bandages just visible along the back of his neck where the damage to his spine began… _right over the spot where he thought he heard the voices! _

Otto turned his head, and Dr. Fischer withdrew the mirror. "Ready to see your visitor now?" he asked. Otto just nodded. The doctor picked up the sunglasses from where he'd left them on the table and offered them to Otto, who accepted them. Despite the darkness of the lenses and the deep shadows in the room around him, he had no trouble seeing. Dr. Fischer turned up the lights as he left, giving Otto a few minutes to adjust to the brightness before another man entered the room. Otto eyed him curiously, wondering if this face went to any of the voices he'd heard since waking up. He didn't look how Otto would have imagined a lawyer or a police officer to look, and he couldn't have been one of the doctors; he had only his left arm.

When Otto met the other's eyes, the man smiled. But, unlike the false smiles Dr. Fischer favored, this man's expression was genuine. The man took a seat beside Otto's head and said, "Hello, Otto."

The warmth and familiarity with which he spoke caught Otto's attention. "Do we know each other?" he asked, trying not to sound hopeful. A friend was something he needed right now, but he had no way of knowing if this man was a friend or just someone taking advantage of Otto's memory loss.

The man's smile faltered slightly, but he quickly recovered. "I'm Dr. Curtis Connors," he said. "You can call me Curt. We've known each other since we attended Empire State University together. About twenty years," he added helpfully. Otto found himself appreciating this man – Curt's – openness. He was the first person Otto had met since awakening who wasn't evasive about Otto's past.

"We're friends?" His voice was more eager than he'd intended. Even though he didn't know this man, having someone with a friendly demeanor around him would make thing easier on him. Too many of the people around him regarded him only with clinical interest – or utter disgust. It would be nice not to be alone in the world anymore…

"We're friends," Curt confirmed. He stared down into his lap, as though uncertain what to say. _And why would he know what to say?_ Otto thought despairingly. "I… I'm not permitted to say much more," he said, his tone regretful. "Your lawyer only gave me permission to speak with you as long as I don't tell you the major details of your life. I just wanted to see for myself that you're alive and…" he trailed off, but Otto could guess what he'd been about to say. _And see for myself that you've forgotten me. _"I also wanted you to… to get to know me better before you're released." Sensing the man was going to say more, Otto didn't reply, though he wondered why it was important for him to get to know Curt.

Fortunately, Curt didn't leave him in the dark for long. "The hospital is going to discharge you in a week, once they're certain you're stable. After that, you're going to come and live with me and my family – assuming I get the approval, of course. They're going to put you in my care because…" here, Curt faltered, and he couldn't look Otto in the eye. "Well, you can't live alone, because…"

"Because I'm a criminal and they can't just put me in jail, since I have no memories," Otto stated matter-of-factly. That was his assumption, anyway; he seemed to have some knowledge of the American criminal justice system, and he was certain this violated it.

Curt looked startled. "What makes you say that?" he asked. Otto couldn't help but notice the man's lack of denial.

Otto would have shrugged, if his back hadn't been so stiff. "There are police guarding my door, I'm kept in restraints, I have a lawyer… and people are _afraid_ of me. You're not, and Dr. Fischer isn't, but whenever the nurses are near me, they tremble. I don't know what I did, but it must have been awful." He remembered the coiled, serpentine machines that had thrust out of his back – there was nothing normal about those… "_Monstrous_."

From the look on his face, Curt was on the verge of protesting… but then he swallowed and said nothing, as if he couldn't bring himself to lie to someone he had called 'friend.' There didn't seem to be anything more to say after that.

XXX

The iguana in the cage seemed to stare reproachfully at Curt as the scientist reached for it, intending to draw another blood sample. He'd poked and prodded the reptile often enough that it seemed to recognize when another such session was impending. Its whip-thin tail lashed angrily as Curt caught it in his grip and carried it over to the table, where one of his assistants helped hold it down by pinning the lizard behind the neck with his left hand. With his right, he picked up the syringe and inserted it between two of the reptile's scales. "Not too much," Curt warned. He didn't want to hurt the lizard, just get a large enough sample to work with. The assistant nodded, working the plunger with expert fingers and extracting a small quantity of blood. The lizard's tail lashed Curt's arm with angry thwacks and it scrabbled at the metal table with its curved ebony talons, but its show of resistance was ineffective. It never ceased to amaze Curt what a fierce fight the little lizard always put up; its dinosaur ancestors would have been proud.

As Curt replaced the lizard, his assistant, Robert, took care of the sample, beginning the process of extracting the DNA from the blood. He was a good assistant, with steady hands and the ability to understand Curt's orders and to follow them to the letter without requiring supervision. Best of all, he never came to the lab late, like a certain brilliant but lazy student who had worked for Curt two years previous. Curt usually hated having to rely on others to do the work for him, but today, it gave him the opportunity to think back on his meeting with Otto, and his own rash decision to take the amnesiac criminal into his home. He worried most about how Martha would react. Otto was an old friend of the family, and yet, he was no longer the man that they'd shared meals with, or spent long nights discussing scientific theory with him, their differences in their fields of study giving them unique insights into each others' projects that they would have missed on their own. Martha's first instinct would be to protect their son, and having a dangerous criminal living in their home would trigger that instinct – even if the criminal had once been a close friend. Martha would be more willing to see Otto as a criminal than Curt… She'd be furious when he told her, and would probably take Billy over to her mother's. Or, at the very least, he could expect the next couple of weeks to be sleeping on the couch. He knew she'd come around eventually, especially when she spent time with Otto and realized he presented no threat.

_Poor Otto… _His conversation with the amnesiac earlier that day had left him feeling numb inside. The person he'd spoken to had some of Otto's characteristics… but he wasn't the Otto Curt knew. He wasn't completely blank, as Curt had initially feared from Dr. Fischer's description of Otto as a 'blank slate'; basic concepts pounded into Otto from youth were still there. But anything connected to Otto's identity was completely _gone… _as if he'd attempted to erase himself from existence, leaving behind the barest shadow of the man he'd been. There'd been an almost childlike innocence in Otto's manner as he'd questioned Curt; he'd been reminded of his son's barrage of "Why?" questions when Billy was younger. But coupled with that curiosity was a desperation that no child had, stemming from the knowledge that he _should_ know the answers. His frustration at not getting those answers matched Curt's own at being unable to give them. Matt Murdock had warned him against telling Otto too much; the authorities didn't trust that Otto wasn't feigning amnesia, and were waiting for the slightest slip-up to catch him in a lie. If Curt said too much, Otto might refer to something Curt had told him while being questioned, and the interrogator might see that knowledge as proof that Otto was lying about his condition. Still, he'd hated keeping so much from his friend, hating seeing that look of utter hopelessness on Otto's face. He felt as if he'd betrayed Otto by not saying more…

And then there had been his strange reluctance to reassure Otto that he wasn't a monster, after all. If _that_ wasn't a betrayal, he didn't know what was. He'd wanted to tell Otto it wasn't his fault, but then he'd remembered the first hospital room and the bodies on the floor, some of them torn to shreds… He hadn't been able to force the words past the lump in his throat. _And this is what you're taking in to your home… _he'd thought. He didn't believe Otto would hurt his family, he honestly didn't… He just hadn't expected the sight of Otto to evoke those vivid, gruesome memories. But at least he seemed to have gotten it out of his system, and he was once again certain he was doing the right thing.

Curt sighed heavily, drawing the attention of his assistant. "Is everything all right, Dr. Connors?" Robert asked, his brow furrowed in concern. He knew that Robert had been worried about his employer's frequent absences from class; Curt hadn't seen fit to explain the purpose of those absences to his students or faculty. And that was another consequence he hadn't fully considered: the reactions of his peers to his agreement to take a criminal into his home. ESU's board claimed not to care what a professor did with his personal life, so long as the university's reputation wasn't tarnished. But what they claimed and what was reality was very different… Curt didn't think he could lose his job over this, but there could be repercussions of another sort.

"I'm fine, Robert," Curt said, his strained voice making the lie obvious. "It's nothing," he added quickly, before Robert could press the issue. Determined to distract himself, he turned his attention to the last of the cages that lined the lab, this one unique in that its occupant wasn't scaled. The albino rabbit had been rescued from one of the other biology labs; the TA had been ready to put it down after it had gotten its front paw stuck in the cage bars and the limb had needed to be amputated. It was an ideal test subject, and it saved Curt from having to amputate an animal's limbs solely for the purpose of experimentation. Even when, if the experiment was a success, those limbs would be replaced…

He smiled, his worries momentarily forgotten, as he contemplated the experiment that had driven his research for years, an experiment that had nearly reached fruition. After losing his arm in the Gulf War and ending his career as a surgeon, Curt had turned his attention to herpetology, the study of reptiles. It wasn't out of a love of the creatures, though he lacked most peoples' atavistic dislike of anything scaly, but because of an ability that some reptiles had: to regenerate lost limbs. It was mostly tails that were regrown, but Curt hoped to isolate the gene responsible and tailor it to fit mammalian DNA, and use it to regenerate other limbs, such as, say, _arms_.

And now, after years of research, Curt's dream had nearly come true. Curt, Robert, and the two other assistants who worked with him had nearly completed a serum designed for rabbit DNA. They'd already extracted a sample of the rabbit's DNA and broken it down to its most basic components, so they could introduce the new gene. Once injected into the rabbit, the DNA would replicate, spreading through the rabbit and, hopefully, trigger the regeneration of the rabbit's front leg. It would be slow going, assuming the altered DNA strand didn't die out. But, theoretically, it could work…

And then… then he could be _whole _again. Curt's left hand strayed to the empty right sleeve of his lab coat, which dangled at his side. It was no secret to his assistants why Curt wanted so fervently for this to work, though there were obviously less selfish applications of the serum.

The serum _had_ to work. If not for his sake, then for the hundreds of amputees like him who struggled with tasks that had once been easy for them. _And we'll know soon enough, _Curt thought with a thrill of excitement. The first batch of the serum was nearly ready; they needed only to tailor it for the rabbit.

Curt glanced over at Robert, who had gone back to observing the DNA separation. With a half-smile, he said the words that Robert and his other assistants had been waiting for. "I think we're about ready to test the serum," he said off-handedly, barely able to conceal the excitement that brimmed up within him. The exuberant dance around the lab he longed to do was just too undignified for an ESU professor. "I'll have Shireena modify the rabbit carrier cells this week, and Friday, we'll inject it."

Robert's eyes lit up. This was it; the culmination of all their studies. "It'll work," he said with the enthusiasm and confidence that Curt wouldn't allow himself to express. Curt didn't have the heart to tell the younger man that the chances of it being totally successful were slim; after all, he'd been young once and certain that everything would go as planned. Curt would be satisfied with even a slight regrowth, because it would mean they were on the right track.

Curt glanced over at the clock and felt his excitement wane. He needed to get home to his family and break the news of Otto's coming to Martha.

It was going to be a long, sleepless night on the couch.

XXX

Night had fallen. The lack of windows in Otto's hospital room would have made the time of day indeterminable, but the change in the hospital's atmosphere clued him in when he woke again. The steady hum was still there, but it was quieter now. And the hall outside his room was darker, creating an illusion of night for the other patients ensconced in the rooms around him.

Assuming that he actually had neighbors. What if they thought he was too dangerous for anyone to even be in the same hospital wing with? He smiled humorlessly. While he couldn't imagine himself being dangerous, Curt's visitor had confirmed it. The man had called himself Otto's friend, yet he hadn't risen to Otto's defense when he'd guessed that he had been monstrous in his previous life. _I'm glad, in a way, that it's all been stripped from me. I don't think I could bear the truth. _

Otto shifted, scowling when he realized he'd been restrained again. While it was true that normal tossing and turning could reinjure his spine, was this really necessary? He was too stiff to move, even unconsciously! He was growing weary of this confinement; he longed for freedom of movement, to get up and walk around, even if his body currently felt too weak to support him. _I'll be out of here soon, _he told himself, attempting to soothe his impatience. In a week… a week which seemed far too short a span of time. He'd had spinal surgery, radiation sickness, burns… If he'd once known more about medical care, he didn't remember it any more, but something about the suddenness sat wrong with him. They were eager to get rid of him, even if it cost him his health!

He settled his face back on the donut-shaped facial resting pad, staring downward at the small expanse of floor that he was coming to know quite well. He knew every crack, ever scuff, every groove, every mark in the marbled pattern. He'd made the whorls of black and white into his own personal Rorschach test – to his left, he saw a rabbit with six legs, and on the right the random pattern formed a screaming face, framed by a swirl of dark hair. He wondered what this said about his psyche.

And then, below him, he saw a pair of feet, encased in heavy boots. That alone was enough to arrest his attention; none of the doctors or nurses wore footwear like this. Otto slowly lifted his head, meeting the eyes of The Woman, the one that he had seen before the bandages had been taken from his eyes. Red flitted in the fathomless depths of her eyes, drawing him inward. "Who are you?" Otto asked, yanking his eyes away to study the woman's face. The smooth, expressionless face may have been marble for all the emotion it showed. Dark, straight brown hair fell to her shoulders. She was dressed in a metal-grey body suit, revealing a slim figure that was barely feminine. Where the sleeve revealed her right arm, he could see a peculiar tattoo starting from her fingers and disappearing back under the sleeve. Her lips moved, but no sound came.

At least, nothing audible to his ears. The background hum centered at the base of his skull suddenly intensified, filling his head until he couldn't hear anything else. He could almost make out the murmuring underlying the static. Otto gritted his teeth, willing them go to away – even he knew that hearing voices in one's head wasn't healthy.

Then, a voice broke through the static, soft, but still clear and distinct. **_Father! Help- _**A burst of white noise obliterated the rest. The woman abruptly vanished, as if she'd never existed.

To Be Continued…

Things start picking up next chapter. Really. Otto's going to get out of the hospital!


End file.
